Slytherin
by randomgenius
Summary: When did Slytherin change from the house of the "devious and cunning" to house of the "fanatical mini-Death Eater purebloods"?
1. Rewrite

**THIS IS A REWRITE! I REPEAT, A REWRITE!**

**Okay, now that I have your attention, I'm actually thinking of turning this into a series. Theo's just so much fun to write, if you get him the right way.**

**I'm gonna assume you know what a disclaimer is.**

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><p>Theodore Nott's First Fact of Life: everyone has a mask. Everyone has something to hide; no one is who they seem. An person's entire personality, reputation, their entire identity may be a mask. Sometimes, a person's only protection was their mask.<p>

Theodore Nott was quite adept at seeing through masks.

This was supposedly an indication of his "Slytherin-ness", according to his father. Slytherin house was, after all, not the House of the Death Eaters. It was for the cunning, the clever. Slytherin was where the people too worldly for Ravenclaw and too smart for Gryffindor went.

Well, it used to be.

Now, it was the house of the purebloods, the house of the mini-Death Eaters (to borrow a phrase from the one ever-enlightened Gryffindors). How else do you think Crabbe and Goyle got in? _Obviously _some well-disguised genius, yes?

_A seven year-old Theodore looked around at the dinner with interest. It was the first time his parents had ever _taken_ him to one of these things, seeing he'd yet to master basic Occlumency and politics before._

_He and a few of the other glorified heirs of the most powerful Most Ancient and Noble Houses of Pureblood Mania were sitting in a corner, watching the adults twirl around in a dignified crowd, somehow carrying out conversations in the course of minutes before socializing elsewhere, then elsewhere, and still keeping track of it all._

_Eventually, Theodore grew bored. He turned to one of the boys sitting next to him._

_What to be... oh, yes. His father said to play "chirpy little boy" for this one._

_"So, what's your name?"_

_The boy didn't respond._

_Theodore poked him in his immense neck._

_He bounced slightly. "Come on, what's your name?"_

_The boy grunted, "Crabbe."_

_Theodore waited. Then, when a first name was non-forthcoming, he gave the boy a strange look. "Alright... well, what's your _first_ name?"_

_The boy screwed up his face. "Vin-cent". It looked painful._

_"Right... well, goodbye," Theodore moved to an exotic-looking boy in the corner.  
><em>

Of course. Just some _very_ well disguised cunning.

And Draco Malfoy was adopted from a family of ferrets.

No, Theodore Nott considered himself a true Slytherin, one the only ones that really did belong to this house.

Well, not that he danced through the halls singing that, of course. The key to being Slytherin was to make yourself seen _un_"Slytherin", a fact that many (Draco Malfoy _especially_) had yet to grasp.

Anyways, Theodore had been raised a pureblood. He had learned how to gain power; he had learned the subtle art of diplomacy. It was in these lessons that Theodore saw how _incredibly_ obtuse the wizarding world had become.

The 'purebloods' were a dying breed, and the intermarrying had resulted in a race of idiotic trolls, mousy cowards, and lunatics. The government was corrupt, creatures with an intense hatred of wizard kind excercized singular control over the economy, and any idea that wasn't based off of some archaic, medieval concept was branded 'fanatical'.

To sum it up, the British Wizarding world was run by "pureblooded" idiots.

Theodore had vowed at a young age to never become a pureblood idiot, if he valued his life and future. Any fool should see that the tide had shifted, and that antagonizing the majority of the wizarding world would most likely have them destroyed.

_Theodore, now nine years of age, furrowed his eyebrows. His father had decided today was to teach him "The Lesson", which was basically why most purebloods thought they were all that and who the Dark Lord was. They were currently sitting in a muggle park, done up in Muggle clothes._

_"But Father, what about all those Muggle things you showed me? The bus thing, and that underground train! What about those?"_

_Theodore's father regarded him for a second. "Theodore, do you really think that Wizardkind would aknowledge those things, after all I've just told you? The other purebloods don't _know_ about the bus, or the Underground. They've most likely never gone out into the Muggle world before, ever."_

_Theodore paused for a second. "What am I supposed to do, about this?"_

_Nott Sr. looked away for a moment, reclining on the bench with a faint smile on his lips. "Well, I don't know, Theodore, what are you going to do?"_

_Theodore regarded his father. "I'm going to have to keep this to myself, aren't I?"_

_Nott Sr. laughed, slightly bitterly. "Well, you could go out and declare it to the world, at the cost of branding the Nott family as blood-traitors and possibly getting expelled from the Wizarding society all together, if you really wanted."_

_Theodore nodded, silently. It wasn't even a question._

_On the bus ride back to the Apparition point, Theodore looked at his father. "Father, what did you do? About the Muggles?"_

_"Only what I could do, Theodore. We all do we what must for ourselves... and those we protect."_

_A hand rose, subconciously, to rub his left forearm, as Nott Sr. gazed out at Muggle London._

Theodore had changed his worldview rather abruptly, after that day. Sad thing was, the world's view of him didn't change at all.

Theodore was already on the wrong foot with the rest of the student body due to his Slytherin pureblood status. It was darkly amusing to see how the rest of the world, who hated him for his 'judgement' and 'prejudice' would immediately be prejudiced and judging to him. He never said anything to anyone, yet they hated him all the same... idiots.

_A girl walked into the classroom, nervously. Theodore could understand her sentiments; it was the first Potions lesson for the first years, and no one had heard anything _good_ about their professor._

_She looked frantically around the room, not spotting any of her house mates, Theodore supposed._

_She caught his eye._

_Hmm. Well, he was raised to be a gentleman._

_Theodore gestured to the seat next to him._

_She rushed up quickly, and muttered a quick thanks before collapsing into a chair._

_"Thanks, I was getting worried. You're Theodore Nott, from Slytherin, aren't you? I saw you getting sorted, right before Harry. I'm Hermione Granger, from Gryffindor. Do all Slytherins really hate Muggleborns?"_

_Theodore reeled back slightly in his chair as the barrage of words was cut off as quickly as it had started. The girl, Granger, stared at him with wide eyes. He scrambled to get his diplomacy, the very thing he'd been raised on, back to action. A stray thought commented on how strange this girl was, if she managed to offset ingrained rituals._

_He paused._

_"You see, Hermione, Slytherins are-"_

_Theodore's hasty defense was shattered by a shout from the entryway to the room. A ginger boy, Weasley by the look of it, stumbled towards Theodore's table._

_"Hermione, what're you doing talking to a _Slytherin_? You're a Gryffindor!"_

_The Granger girl looked at the Weasley cooly. "Well, Ronald, you'll have to excuse me for not accepting your stereotypes as proven fact. Theodore and I were merely discussing Slytherin ideals on pressing issues, such as racial discrimination, and he _was_ here first. So I'd suggest that you-"_

_Theodore never got to find out, though he wished dearly to, what Ron should do. The rest of the Gryffindor house stumbled in, along with a few late Slytherins. They quickly noticed the spat, and warily set down their bags on their respective sides of the room. A battle was in the making._

_Granger seemed to notice this as well, and gave Theodore an apologetic glance and joined the rest of Gryffindor._

_She never spoke to Theodore again._

Then again, Theodore couldn't judge them too harshly; every word that came out of Draco Malfoy's mouth made him want to hate himself, too.

Draco Malfoy was one of the most _annoying_, _idiotic_ people he had ever had the displeasure to meet (besides a certain Weasley). Honestly, the boy had been _handed from birth _a position of practically unlimited, yet had to be heavy handed, snobbish, egotistical, and didn't even know how to butter someone up! Malfoy strutted around, waving his status around like a flag and bragging _all about_ how his father was a great big Death Eater! Theodore wondered if Malfoy knew just what Lord Voldemort did during his reign of horror and death. But then, Malfoy was truly like a ferret; he was loyal to whoever pampered him.

Despite his _loathing_ of Malfoy and his mauling of the Slytherin name, he had to admit Malfoy provided a good cover. Who'd suspect, after meeting him, that there was such thing as an _intelligent_ Slytherin?

Yes, the idiotic pureblood; this was Theodore's mask. As a nasty, mean Slytherin, he was ignored and ostracized. As such, no one ever cared if Theodore was there, or what he was doing. He was practically invisible.

His roommates had been a nuisance at first. Every pureblood parent had told their children that the first thing to do at Hogwarts was make allies, especially the pureblood ones. Diplomacy was drilled in pureblood children at a young age, whether they took to it or not. Theodore had taken to it like a fish to water; Theodore wasn't even sure if Malfoy and Co. knew what it meant. Theodore had no intention of letting a boy like that associating with him.

So, Theodore had let his roommates make their introductions, then pulled out his quiet bookworm persona to get them off his back. It had worked disappointingly well- for the most part (you could never count Zabinis in any assumption). The nerve of those boys, calling themselves Slytherins...

_A pale boy, shadowed by two hulking tro- other boys entered the room loudly complaining about how someone or another thought he was all that. _(Looking back now, Theodore found this immensely amusing.) _Another boy following, but not shadowing, was nodding half-mindedly while analyzing his accomodations. He knew them, of course. Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, and Blaise Zabini. They'd seen each other before, at the frequent socials hosted between purebloods. However, now they were _really_ meeting each other, preparing for life outside Hogwarts. Theodore had been previously reading, lounging in his bed, but now sat up and stared at the intrud- his housemates._

_Might as well get this done with, he thought grimly._

_He approached Draco Malfoy (the ramifications of this were immense in pureblood society; they put him in a position of supposed deference. It also got Malfoy to not consider him a rival. Pride could be put on the shelf for these things.) "Draco. Enchanting, as always, to see you and your... comrades." Malfoy nodded, then continued ranting to the thu- "comrades" about- Harry Potter, was it? Interesting._

_He turned to Zabini. Zabini was a problem. He was smart, much smarter than Malfoy, yet entertained himself by messing with people's minds. If he was going to even partially enjoy the next few years, they'd have to come to an understanding. _

_He looked Zabini in the eye, and held out his hand. "Zabini." This was said in a neutral tone (conveying Theodore's proposal of a treaty)._

_Zabini smirked. "Nott. _Ever_ so lovely to see you again. How are those _books_ of yours?" This meant yes, I'll play along. Good, Theodore needed an alliance with the Zabinis as much as they needed an alliance with the Notts._

_Theodore flashed a matching smirk, but then shrugged and said in a vague tone, "Oh, books are books. If you'll excuse me..." and drifted over to his bed, shutting the curtains with a yank._

_Done._

From then on, Theodore had spent his time readying himself for the world of politics. He practiced on his peers, all of Hogwarts, dissecting them quickly and discretely. He understood most of them better than they did themselves.

Now, afterwards, he half regretted it.

Why? His findings: more than half the population of Hogwarts was shallow, spoiled, and/or naive.

Most Muggleborns didn't know that Voldemort was the Dark Lord's name, or practically about him. Practically all the knew that he was a _bad_, _evil_ _Slytherin_, killed a bunch of Muggles, and was killed by the ever-so-amazing-Golden-Boy Harry freakin' Potter, the humble and heroic Gryffindor. All the halfbloods, while normally the most tolerable of Hogwarts, were normally set against Slytherin upon arrival at school. The purebloods... well, he'd made his opinion clear.

Well, despite how disturbing his foray had been had been, the practice had paid off. He'd only ever been caught once, while analysing the entire school. It was some strange girl, all platinum hair and dazed eyes. Luna Lovegood, that was her name.

_Theodore was sitting outside, beneath the dock steps. Why?_

_He was hiding._

_Zabini had got in in his head to stir up some trouble between Draco and Goyle, who had gone missing the night before, along with Draco's sweets from home (no one had yet thought to look for Goyle, but instead watched Draco tearing through the room). While amusing, this had the unfortunate effect of driving Draco into a frenzied hunt for Goyle, enlisting the help of the other Slytherins._

_Well, he wasn't under the dock steps._

_He didn't actually care (shocking) about what Draco wanted. He just loved that he had an opportunity to put Draco in his debt. A small one, but a debt none the less._

_He was reading about the Goblin Wards of the 1400s, an actually fascinating political debacle that _still_ had the Ministry embarassed, when a girl passed by._

_Normally, Theodore wouldn't care._

_Normally, girls didn't wear bottle caps and radishes, while twirling down a remote road... alone._

_Theodore stared at the girl._

_She twirled by._

_Theodore stared after her for a second, then shook his head and returned to his book. He was in no mood to question the purpose behind this._

_Then, not a minute later, she twirled back up._

_She twirled down._

_She twirled up._

_She twirled down._

_She- "Would you stop that already, _please_?" Theodore nearly shouted. He shouldn't let himself get so riled up, but she was just so _distracting_!_

_The girl gave him a dreamy smile, and plopped down next to Theodore._

_"All you had to do was ask, Theodore Nott."_

_Alright, thought Theodore. This is possibly some strange spirit coming to tell me of my future, or I have a stalker. He glanced at the girl, who had somehow managed to flip upside down when he wasn't looking, and immediately looked back to his book. Alright... I'm leaning towards stalker. Is there a sanitorium nearby?_

_The girl, completely oblivious to his inner struggle between stalker and loon, began humming through her nose and talking at the same time._

_"I've seen you at lunch, Theodore Nott. You don't sit at talk to people, but you look at them funny. I saw a nargle running away from you head. Tell me, are you a Narglemonstroficator?"_

_Darn you, child! thought Theodore. Are you a stalker _and_ a loon?_

_"No. I don't happen to know what that is." Theodore said through gritted teeth._

_"Oh, well," said Luna (rather vaguely) who was _still humming_. "I'd so hoped. I suppose you're just being Slytherin, than. There aren't many Slytherins who _act_ Slytherin, but you do. You're really good at it, too. Of course, you should probably talk to people, because they don't know that you know all about them. Power is a relative thing, you know."_

_Theodore jerked up, half-ready to berate this strange girl next to him, but she was already gone. With a twirl, she skipped down towards the Forbidden Forest._

_Theodore didn't look twice before running away._

Luna Lovegood was insane, but to Theodore's knowledge, the insane ones always got the most power (Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, Ollivander, etc.). Or was it that the ones with power always went insane? No matter. Theodore took her words to heart, because you should _always_ listen to the insane people.

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><p>Theodore Nott went on to lead an illustrious career at the Ministry, making Head of International Cooperation at twenty-seven. When asked if there was a reason he could credit to his success, he looked seriously at the reporter. "Well," he said slowly. "I'd suppose it's because I figured out what it meant to be a sneaky, slimy, Slytherin."<p>

Those words went down in history.


	2. Hermione

**Guess what? I did one about Hermione!**

**Yeah, I'm thinking about changing it from _centered_ around Theodore, because everyone's a tad bit Slytherin... a****nd I can do it, too, because this is my story! So there!**

**Also, I didn't mean for this to come out as Ron-bashing. It just... did. I set it around a few weeks after the whole troll thing, because Ron _was_ awful to Hermione, and these _are_ actual flaws of Ron's... just emphasized in a very cynical way. My head cannon for this is that as they spend more time around each other, they find more redeeming qualities, and Harry can finally stop worrying about his two best friends killing each other.**

**Well, until third year. (Poor Harry.)**

**So, I'd like to state that I _am_ feeling the whole Theo/Luna thing, but Hermione/Theo angst just _speaks_ to me. **

**Like Colin/Astoria.**

**...I have problems.**

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><p>It wasn't that Hermione hated Ron.<p>

Because she didn't.

No, _really_. She didn't hate him. Not even a little bit.

They were _friends_! Just, well, _extremely_ _dysfunctional_ friends…

She just really, _really_, very _strongly_ disliked him… with a passion.

It's just that, well, they were so _different_! He was so _lazy_ and so _brash_ and so _stubborn_, and it was so _incredibly_ hard to compromise for someone who _wouldn't do the same_ _for you_. For Merlin's sake, he didn't even _try_! Here she was, doing everything she could to keep things pleasant, and he just _sat_ there like it was such a _boon_, to be allowed in his _glorious_ presence.

Not _even_ to mention how _selfish_ he was. It's like he just _expected_ her to do all his schoolwork for him (never mind the fact that teachers could _tell _when peoples essays were the _exact same thing_!), and if she happened to _resent_ that, then oh, she was just being a _silly little bookworm_.

She could already tell this was going to be _such_ a _healthy_ relationship.

Hermione tried to tolerate Ron, though; both for the sake of having a friend, and for Harry's continued sanity. Despite his (oh _so_ many) flaws, Ron had some redeeming qualities.

Somewhere.

Of course, she preferred Harry. She only dealt with Ron _for_ Harry. She and Harry had naturally gravitated together, probably due to the fact that they were both Muggle-raised children struggling to get in pace with a new, utterly contradictory world. She was the only one that he could relate to, who'd never known him as some great hero, who got how crazy it was for him. On the flip side, he understood (though didn't share) her mania for learning, for finding a solid ground in this ridiculous society.

Not that Harry really needed books; his observation skills were of such a caliber that he managed to pick it up as he went along. Harry was actually much more intelligent than anyone, including himself, had been lead to believe. He was just afraid of trying.

Hermione could understand that (though she didn't share it). Didn't stop her from pushing him, though.

She'd often heard Ron moan about her, when he thought her out of earshot. He'd pester Harry about why they even bothered with her, that she was such a bore, and the only thing she was actually good for was schoolwork…

(Really, it would have stung more if she hadn't already heard it all before.)

Then Harry would shrug, fake a smile at Ron, and distract him with something else. _That_ had hurt a bit, Harry not standing up for her, but she could get why. She would want to cling to every friend that came her way, too. (In fact, she _did_.)

Hermione got the feeling that Harry had the same social troubles she'd had growing up. Of course, she didn't understand _why_ (he was smart, kind, and incredibly humble while still so noble), but she could see the signs. There were just certain things that only being bullied can teach you; for example, it seemed that Harry had learnt the same way she had when it was best to save your own skin and just_ let it go_.

(Pride and honor flew out the door when you were your only ally.)

But sweet little _Ron_ had never known anything beyond his mother's coddling and his brothers' squabbling and never having to work for _anything_ (she could already tell that Wizarding "badly off" and Muggle "badly off" were two wildly different things, so, no sympathy there), and he had no such filter between his mouth and his brain (assuming he had one… the jury was still out on that). He never considered the impact of a simple taunt, of the casual derision he adopted so often (half the time directed at her).

Any insult directed at Ron, real or imagined, he took with poor grace; this usually meant exploding, sulking, then snapping at all passer-by for the next day or two. After that, it usually blew over, with little thought spared to anything beyond his own self-pity.

(Ron wasn't exactly the thinking sort. How he was so good at chess, she'd never know.)

It was funny, how Ron was so like those he so despised. He may have a hairpin trigger, but the Slytherins generally weren't all that passive, either. Ron was a master of strategy (not that he used it beyond chess), a trait that Slytherins valued highly. Both held extreme prejudice for the other, and both leapt at _any_ chance to do injury to the other.

Now that she thought about it, the majority of the Slytherins were _just like_ Ron. However, there _were_ two distinct differences between Ron's bullying and the Slytherins' bullying.

The first was that the Slytherins knew _exactly_ how much their words hurt.

The second was that the Slytherins used the pain they inflicted as a defense mechanism.

It was a simple (if flawed) philosophy: by driving them away, they can't get close enough to hurt you. Despite Hermione's… _strained_ interactions with the Slytherin house, she had derived some things from observation and conjecture.

Slytherins, both by nature and by upbringing, were extremely paranoid creatures. Most were also emotionally fractured, due to neglectful upbringing and little chance for developing actual friendships. The paranoia and lack of real, unfettered interaction with contemporaries culminated in a social awkwardness in situations beyond those that they understood.

Basically, they couldn't deal with being out of their depth.

This problem only got worse as one emotionally-stunted generation raised the next, with mistake upon mistake stacking up on each other, and eventually being viciously protected as "tradition".

For perspective, one such tradition was the shunning of Muggleborns.

It wasn't all due to superiority complexes, really. Muggleborns were something _new_, something _foreign_. The Muggleborns carried the ideas and principles of a whole different _world_, and the pureblood class had no idea how to deal with that. They were the weak ones, the lost ones, and that _just couldn't happen_.

So they attacked the change, viciously and desperately.

It's not that she was explaining away their cruelties; they were still functioning human beings (if slightly challenged when it came to deep thinking… or thinking at all), and she held them fully accountable for their wrongs. It's just that it was extremely hard for them to break the mold, especially since they saw no reason to.

The psyche of a bully was extremely interesting, and really quite pitiable. She had witnessed the same motivators in her old playground tormentors, with their terrified censure after she had done something _freakish_ (which she now knew to instead be _magical_). They were overwhelmed by something they failed to understand, which made them feel weak and exposed. To fix this, they attempted to restore their sense of control, which meant removing the anomaly. The attacker didn't _realize_ that they were being motivated by fear; generally, they never did. The one thing Hermione had yet to discern, however, if it was flat-out pride that created their denial, or a mixture of things a little bit deeper.

It didn't matter, though. Realizing the rest had been enough to restore Hermione's sense of self-worth; it had been a tad worrying, though, the rush of vicious pleasure she'd felt from cutting away all her old bullies' pretenses and airs and exposing them for what they were.

Even though they weren't there, she'd beaten them. After that revelation, bullies rarely managed to get to her (the last one to do so was _Ron_, and that was because she hadn't seen it coming, though she really should have).

Of course, she wasn't saying that _all_ Slytherins were emotionally-unstable bullies. There were a few Slytherins (usually the ones a little less pure-blooded) that tolerated or even _embraced_ innovation; they were the small percent that also circumvented conflict and just avoided Muggleborns altogether.

There had been one boy like that, at the very beginning of the year…. Theodore Nott, that was his name. He had been promising: kind, bookish and refreshingly quiet. Soon enough, a promising friendship had been blossoming in the nurturing warmth of naïveté.

But then Ron _bloody_ Weasley had brought that all crashing down, storming in and declaring that he was a _Slytherin_ (as if she didn't know that), and "_what was she _doing_, talking to him?!"_, even though Theodore had been more pleasant to her than _any_ Gryffindor so far (save Neville).

After that, Ron had kept a close watch on her to make sure she "avoided any more of those slimy Slytherins' traps", and she got the feeling Theodore was receiving the same. Thus ended any hope of having a friend that was also her intellectual equal (not all the Ravenclaws were smart, contrary to belief, and the others were too pretentious to bother).

So, yeah, maybe she was a little bitter.

And _maybe_ she resented Ron for driving off the one person she'd found so far that she could actually _talk_ with, without having to avoid long words or tiptoe around inferiority complexes. And _perhaps_ she still blamed him, just a little bit, for still feeling alone. And _sometimes_, she _might_ just catch sight of Theodore in the library, reading an obscure book she _knew_ was on Magical Theory (a topic she found fascinating), because she had been looking for the _exact same book_ for _ages_ only to find out the library didn't stock it, and she'd feel something distinctly ugly stir in a corner of her mind.

But she didn't _hate_ him.

Well, not yet. (Although, if he didn't stop trying to make her like Quidditch…)


End file.
